Step 4: Specialize
All Rangers are unique, and take particular pride in their skills and equipment, particularly their wand. Players may select and two of the following to specialize their character:

The wand rules don't exist yet, so this is speculative, but assuming that the mechanics match the fluff I don't think that Visualization being a Perception skill is a good design decision. It's that one skill you use to do your best combat stuff and also that one skill you use to do all of your out of combat wizard shit, it's something that everyone is going to want the best dicepool they can manage for. That's not a huge balance problem since people can use Certs to switch it to their best stat so even low-perception characters can access some wizard shit, but it's pretty inelegant. The game might work better if you just used your best attribute for wizarding by default and there was some other perception skill filling in the slot.

Visualization is going to be a key skill for many wand functions, but not the only skill for wand functions._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

Space credits. Kronor. Double dollars. Box tops?_________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

"norma valuto" - or "normvalo(s)"? The currency is "norma valuto" (in the sense that British currency is "Sterling") while a unit of that currency is a "norma dolaro" (in the sense that Sterling comes in Pounds?) The abbreviation would still be N$, for historical reasons?_________________Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Frank

Going off of Praetor's idea on that, I can imagine it being corrupted from "Dolaro" to "Olar", and the symbol would be Φ.

Running commentary, in no particular order
* I personally love the cat angle you've taken here
* Survival (6) is given the example of indefinitely surviving on an alien world without equipment - does this cover stuff like volcanic vents and unbreathable atmospheres?
* Does it cost 6 or 8 CLP to raise an attribute from 6 to 7?
* Stress: Why is it stressful for a human to spend two days in a human community? What is the difference between solitary confinement & confined space? How long is a therapy session or downtime activity to reset the Stress Test Target? Do you need to exit the stressful condition to be able to receive therapy or unwind?

Character Creation
Let's go through character creation as written in the book.
Step 0 No work here, it's the baseline.

Charisma 1, Courage 1, Intellect 1, Perception 1
Tags: Standard

Step 1 Choose two backgrounds. One restriction to keep in mind is that we can't choose any Certs w/prereqs, since it's mathematically impossible to meet them at this step (except Rapid Healing). Reading for combinations, I can't help but notice that when trying to maximize a single skill, you're not going to have a Lunar-Belter or Medical-Engineer or something similar, which is a really clever way to subtly encourage an 'organic' background.

Step 3 We don't really have an equipment list as of yet, so this will be skipped.
Step 4 If I wanted to just go crazy with Engineering, Mastery would be the best option (by a large margin), but would also be the least efficient CLP-wise. Raising Intellect or Engineering with my specialization is equal in CLP conversion to buying four tags, which I suspect was intentional. Triangular advancement combined with linear creation is surprisingly not much of a problem because stats are generated in grouped packages - I like it.
Step 5 Space Ranger Jouko "the Dog" Chennault is fiercely loyal and tends to deflect personal questions concerning signs of weakness._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

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EXPLOSIVE RUNES!

Last edited by virgil on Mon Apr 17, 2017 4:26 am; edited 1 time in total

Been busy the last couple of weeks, I need to pick this up again. Debating ditching triangular advancement for linear, have to work the angles a bit._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Added/modified some bits on travel, especially Pilot v. Navigation Tests. That made me realize I had to go back and add a rider about certs vis-a-vis Group Tests/Contests. Still need a section on vehicles, space combat. 41.2k_________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

Fiddled with vehicle combat, and ultimately didn't want to write a separate minigame or bring acceleration/deceleration/delta v into it; scrapped the ideas I had for making space combat more complicated, ended up deleting it. 41.6k, time to move on to wands and wand mechanics._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

First part of the Wands section; still a good bit more to do, as Wand Functions are the meat of the setting, and I'm still fine-tuning some of the mechanics in my head, based on conversations with Frank. 42.2k._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

I like the pulp aesthetic just fine, but I also think the abstract is the best of those._________________"Now that we've determined that up to π angels can dance on the head of a pin, how do we determine the specific number (or fraction) of angels dancing?"
"What if angels from another pin engage them in melee combat?"

This isn't dead, I've just been busy with Howard Days, which involves a 15-hour drive to Texas, enough Texas barbecue to kill a Yankee, and another 15-hour drive back. Once my colon has recovered from the intestinal ravages of a 96-hour diet of Dr. Pepper, chicken-fried steak, German sausage, spicy beans, spicy corn, and unidentifiable beef products, I will resume._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

That can't be much barbecue. I've been a Yankee trapped in Texas for over 15 years now, and two plates will probably come close._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

Still fiddling with the basics of wand mechanics, as I want the different categories to be distinct but not unbalanced. So far have one beam function and one level 1 function written up. In a more perfect world, I'd come up with a Shadowrun-style formula design process, but I don't know if I have the juice for that, so I'm keeping it idiosyncratic. 44k_________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

A few more functions up. Still really struggling with some of the basic concepts, which I should have devoted more forethought to. 44.8k_________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

Finally finished the Azathoth Field functions - which turned out to be a bit messier and more complicated than I wanted; anyone that wants to take a gander at the six wand functions and tell me where I've gone wrong, that would be useful before I get started on the next one._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com